Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The instinct or faculty of appetite for food.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. Propensity to seek or take nourishment, to eat and drink: first and still chiefly used by phrenologists.

n. The organ of the brain that is said to communicate the pleasure which arises from eating and drinking, and which prompts the taking of nourishment. Its supposed seat is in the region of the zygomatic fossa. See phrenology.

We (the Western public) regard picnics as highly advantageous to health and beauty, promoting social sympathy and high-toned alimentiveness, advancing the interests of the community and the ultimate welfare of the nation.

The organ of alimentiveness, located directly in front of the ear, indicates the functional conditions of the stomach, which, when aroused by excessive hunger, exerts a debasing influence upon this and all of the adjacent organs, and is demoralizing to both body and mind.

Observe the greater breadth of the brain of the Indian, which according to cerebral physiology indicates great alimentiveness, indolence, morbid sensibility, irritability, profligacy, but also note that it _differs materially in the proportion of all its parts_, from the European brain.

Any one will notice that if he will compare the skull of the average self-made hen with that of Daniel Webster, taking careful measurements directly over the top from one ear to the other, the well-informed brain student will at once notice a great falling-off in the region of reverence and an abnormal bulging out in the location of alimentiveness.

Phrenologically the Indian allows his alimentiveness to overbalance his group of organs which show veneration, benevolence, fondness for society, fêtes champêtres, etc., hope, love of study, fondness for agriculture, an unbridled passion for toil, etc.

Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs -- these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth.